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Cringely's 2006 Results, 2007 Predictions

Posted by Zonk on from the seer-of-seers-prognosticator-of-prognosticators dept.

Underpants writes "Bob Cringely posts the results of his 2006 predictions (only 69% successful, so Bob is sad). He also lists his calls for 2007; none are particularly shocking, but some are at least interesting. 2007 predictions from the article: '4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing. 9) Zune 2.0 appears, isn't brown, but still nobody buys it. 10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can't really deliver.'"

9 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Refreshing to see a pundit... by Dobeln · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...going through their predictions list for once. Also, he played the umpire quite well - that's some pretty harsh judgements. (Wrong on iPhone/iTV - heh.)

  2. I like number 10 by Jack+Malmostoso · · Score: 5, Informative

    In Italy this is already happening, with the main ISP (Telecom Italia) faking DNS problems to cover up the fact that they just can't deliver all the ADSL they sold. Despite the fact that they shape Bittorrent (and other P2P) traffic...

    1. Re:I like number 10 by SpectralDesign · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Curious!

      I'm on Rogers HighSpeed in Canada, and lately they've been shaping BT traffic, and the past few months having intermittent connectivity issues -- just a couple or few days ago the service wasn't working, but the lights on the modem all appeared fine... Needless to say, I didn't want to call customer support to be on hold for an hour or more and finally be told that they were working on the problem and to try it again the next day (useless!) so after a few hours and several resets of the modem I decided to try a ping from my router and lo and behold, it worked...

      I punched in the IP for a DNS server that I knew of, and used that to get the numbers for OpenDNS and now have my router issuing those with DHCP requests instead of the Rogers DNS servers. Funny -- everything has been working just fine since I made that change.

      Is Telecom Itialia also owned by Ted Turner?!? At any rate, it seems they went to the same "We've Oversubscribed, What Can We Do Now?" convention as each other.... Bastards!

      --
      Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
  3. Re:Question for 2007: by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why? because it's brown or because it's expensive?

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. A bit wrong... by Karganeth · · Score: 5, Informative

    2007 prediction - "Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing."

    This already happened in the UK in 2006. Crazy by Gnarls Barkely went to number 1 on the charts without having a single physical copy on sale. It is one of the best songs of 2006. It stayed at nubmer one for nine weeks.

    1. Re:A bit wrong... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Funny

      Isn't the UK the market where a Celphone ringtone hit the pop charts?

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  5. Re:11. Intel rebrands self and no one notices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    They did rebrand.

    Old Logo and now ... New Logo.

    Did someone actually care? nope.

  6. Re:Easy prediction on DRM by StringBlade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not really, because their DRM scheme either becomes a publicity nightmare (like Sony's rootkit) or it gets cracked very shortly after it's released and all those months (or years) of research and development are for naught, forcing them to start over again from scratch.

    I view DRM scheme creators in a similar light to anti-virus software makers: their task is never-ending because they are attacking the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself and it's a very thankless job.

    --
    ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  7. Re:Tecos and cablecos raped our asses for decades by Christianfreak · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have FTTH from Verizon. I live in a suburb of Dallas. 15mB down 2mB up, 300+ TV channels (all digital) and phone service. Its all about $120. I'm very happy with the service.

    --
    The Anti-Blog